The Segregation Premium: How Gender Shapes the Symbolic Valuation Process of Occupational Prestige Judgments

Abstract

Symbolic valuation is an important but overlooked aspect of gendered processes of inequality in the occupation structure. Prior work has largely focused on the material valuation of gendered work, such as how much predominantly-female versus predominantly-male occupations pay. Less research has examined the symbolic valuation of work, such as how prestigious predominantly-female versus predominantly-male occupations are. What research has examined this question has remained inconclusive at best. Drawing on insights into and techniques from the sociology of culture and cognition, this study examines the role of an occupation’s gender composition in how Americans judge the prestige of jobs, testing key predictions from theories of gender and status. Using 2012 General Social Survey and federal occupation-level data, it finds evidence for a segregation premium: people view gender-segregated occupations as the most symbolically valuable jobs. Both men and women reward gender-segregated occupations with symbolic value, although there is evidence of a gendered in-group bias in which women in particular see women’s work as more prestigious, while men see men’s work as more prestigious.

The Heterarchy of Occupational Status: Evidence for Diverse Logics of Prestige in the United States*

“…Two studies have established the importance of an occupation's relationship to formal knowledge, authority, and science for its prestige (Gauchat and Andrews 2018;Zhou 2005; see also Hinze 1999). Further work has shown that a job's gender and racial composition (Valentino 2019(Valentino , 2020 are important factors impacting how prestigious it is rated. Finally, some scholars have also argued for the importance of the division between mental and manual labor (Wrigley 1982), as well as the degree to which a job involves care work (England 2005;Hodges 2020).…”

Constructing the Racial Hierarchy of Labor: The Role of Race in Occupational Prestige Judgments*

“…This is what I term the materialist assumption: the notion that only the material factors associated with a job influence where people place it in the occupational status hierarchy. Emerging research has instead suggested the importance of non‐material factors in occupational prestige judgments, such as the affective qualities of a job (Freeland and Hoey 2018; MacKinnon and Langford 1994), an occupation’s level of authority and autonomy (Zhou 2005), and the gender composition of an occupation (Valentino 2020).…”

“…Much research on occupational prestige presumes that everyone views the occupational hierarchy the same way—regardless of their own social identity, such as what country they live in (Lin and Xie 1988; Tiryakian 1958; Treiman 1977) or what social groups they belong to (Hodge, Siegel, and Rossi 1964; Nakao and Treas 1992; Stevens and Featherman 1981). Yet, emerging research has highlighted the role of a person’s level of education (Lynn and Ellerbach 2017; Zhou 2005) and gender (Hinze 2005; Valentino 2020) in shaping the way they perceive the occupational hierarchy. Once again, however, the role of race in this process has gone largely unnoticed.…”

Boxed In: Beliefs about the Compatibility and Likability of Mother-Occupation and Father-Occupation Role Combinations

“…But given that work roles vary tremendously in terms of both objective features (e.g., percentage who work part-time in an occupation) and the meanings (e.g., helpful, powerful) the public associates with them (Gottfredson 1981; White and White 2006; see also Freeland and Hoey 2018; Valentino forthcoming), it seems likely that some occupations might be perceived as more compatible with motherhood or fatherhood, which is precisely why other occupations stand out as incompatible. Our first objective, then, is to test the extent to which our theoretical knowledge regarding the cultural definitions of “good” and “bad” mothers and fathers predict perceptions of incompatibility: among mothers (and fathers) who are employed, to what extent do extant cultural stereotypes explain why certain kinds of work roles (i.e., occupations) are widely construed to be less compatible with motherhood (and fatherhood) compared to others?…”